


Blood of My Blood

by orphan_account



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Chinese Mythology & Folklore, Gen, Historical Hetalia, Sino-Japanese War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 08:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16238282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Once he was something great, not this weak and pathetic creature lying in the mud, battered by foreign soldiers and demands and a century of humiliation. But that's alright; he'll shoulder onwards like always. China, Japan, and the Second Sino-Japanese War. 1936-1938





	Blood of My Blood

China peripherally remembers being a child. 

Lying on the shallow banks of the Yellow River, turning those smooth stones under hand, letting mud and silt rush over him with the water. River reeds choking and meshing in the bends of the iver. The screeching and calling of the birds circling in the sky, thousands of leagues away, that irreparable expanse of _loneliness._

The muggy summer air of the shores of the Yellow River, the sheer and forbidding mountains of Huashan, the rush of breath in his lungs, the crowds of people moving in and out of Chang’an, the merchants and their silks and the poor farmers tending to their fields, the conspiring of the imperial officials. The thousands of people toiling under the whip of the Qin Emperor, bleeding and sweating and dying and being built into the Great Wall itself.

Now there are foreign invaders tearing through the river reeds, disturbing stones and uprooting homes. The Great Wall is a decrepit ruin compared with the thousands of state of the art weapons that Japan’s soldiers carry. And worst of all, China feels his own people tearing each other apart, tearing him apart just as much as the enemy does with each step they take, each shot they fire. 

(And it’s not just Japan, no, it’s the westerners who have carved out little holes in his nation where they claim sovereignty, force him to bow his head and grit his teeth.)

Today it’s the Communists and the Nationalists, yesterday it was the Three Kingdoms of Shu, Han, and Wei, tomorrow it’ll be another group of rebels against the established party. 

He wonders if it is foolish hope to wonder if he can ever truly be whole again. But this time, there are no Emperors with their righteous and divine authority derived from Heaven itself. There are no masterful tacticians who drive the enemy away with nothing but empty cities and elegant melodies. No amount of prayers or offerings to Heaven will bring forth divine retribution, nor will the charting of the stars show a path to victory. 

He can’t even see the stars most nights or is too occupied to chart out the course of history they spell out. 

Yao has a feeling that he wouldn’t like what kind of fate the stars have spelled out for him anyway. 

He wonders what happened to that pensive child he found in the secluded bamboo grove, sitting there alone like he had once been. Or perhaps he had never been quite a child? What did any of them know about being children, when they were forced to take up arms against others from the moment of conception in order to have any say in their own sovereignty? 

He’s glad, really, proud even that the boy in the bamboo has become such a strong empire. That he has managed to strike back against the hands of the westerners and their power grabbing ways (even if he has had to adopt the westerners’ ways in order to do so). 

Four thousand years of tradition are not so easily negated. Japan will become strong through the westerners’ ways, but China clings stubbornly to his traditions and hopes for the best. 

_December 1936_

Zhang Xueliang is quickly proving to be a favorite of his. He remembers the wealthy boy who grew up with western friends, then the poor man, addicted to opium and so deeply entrenched in his vices that it took the Japanese killing his father for him to come to his senses. 

But he seems a true patriot; he gives up the power of being his own lord and master and submits to the will of the Republic of China so that there might be some semblance of unity, so that Sun Yat-sen’s grand vision of a democratic and industrialized society might be realized. 

Once again, the man proves his mettle. He and Yang Hucheng ambush Kai-shek, capture him on his way trying to flee up the steps of Mount Li. 

“Why,” asks Xueliang, “should we be fighting our fellow Chinese when the enemy tears through Manchuria and hungers for the rest of our country?” 

Chiang Kai-shek insists that the Communists are the greater threat. The Japanese are merely superficial wounds, as if Yao doesn’t already have the scars to prove that they’re hardly superficial. But they hold guns to his head, demand he make peace with the Communists and thus the Second United Front is born. 

Chiang Kai-shek looks at Xueliang with hatred in his eyes, and Yao knows that Xueliang has chosen a long and solitary path. 

For a time, the aching of his bones diminishes and he can almost pretend he’s whole again. Almost. 

_July, 1937_

Yao knows his own people well - of course they can’t take the fact that Manchuria flies red and white lying down. They have the little boy from the old Qing dynasty too (he is somewhat regretful of that fact, perhaps if he had not been of the Manchu and a foreigner at heart the new republic would have allowed some symbolic place for Puyi), to preside over their decisions and pretend that it isn’t Tokyo dictating every move. 

They line up their soldiers on the outskirts of town. The Chinese open fire. 

Tokyo responds with full scale invasion. 

Beijing and Tianjin fall within a month of fighting. 

_September, 1937_

The autumn moon is particularly bright today. It gazes benevolently down at them, taking ghostly spires of the buildings within its ghostly pale embrace. Chang’e must miss her husband as much as he misses his siblings. 

He wonders if Kiku is also looking at the same beautiful moon right now. 

_The rabbit is pounding medicine up in the moon._

_November, 1937_

Shanghai falls. 

Chiang Kai-shek retreats. 

“We’ll outlast them, with the vastness of our territory and the strength of our people,” he promises. 

The Japanese march on. 

_December, 1937_

Nanjing is burning. 

The Three Character Classic preaches that men are born inherently good. Can anyone blame him for doubting that? 

He spends a full hour vomiting blood, and he damn well wishes that it were the only consequence of the whole sordid affair. They line civilians up into orderly, single file rows and kill them all. They come door to door with their harsh bastardized Mandarin and they single out the women to use for their own pleasure, sparing neither the elderly nor the young. 

(The others call them _guizi bing_ , the Devil’s soldiers.) 

He remembers those men well, each one that the Japanese soldiers lined up and shot by firing squad; the little children sitting in a dutiful rows as the teacher scratches away at the blackboard, the boys running in the streets and playing with the loose stones on the road, the young men studying and fighting and coming home to their families. 

The little girls who giggled over their books, dutiful hands feeding the pigs scraps and picking up stray strands of wheat under the baking hot sun. 

They’re all gone now. 

_Wang xian sheng, look, I can recite this poem now! My teacher praised me in front of the class. Father says if I study well I can finally have the money to buy all the shortcakes* I want._

_Wang xian sheng, I’m the top of my class now. I want to make father and mother proud._

_Wang xian sheng, why won’t mother come see me anymore?_

_Wang xian sheng, why does it hurt?_

“Why?” he chokes out quietly, words scraping his throat raw, “You wanted sovereignty, you wanted land for your new empire, but why did you have to-” 

But the house is empty and silent; there is no longer anyone left to reply. 

America comes, offers his military counsellors and limited aid, though never openly and never enough.

“Man, this is brutal,” he rubs the back of his head and says nothing more. Really, there is nothing to say. The cruelty of men is unsurpassable. 

_February 1938_

In the spring, Yao hangs up spring couplets written on the backs of military orders and memos. He makes his own dumplings haphazardly and pretends that he doesn’t still miss the large family he once had. He hasn’t seen the Koreas much since Japan took over a couple decades ago, England and Portugal have taken Hong Kong and Macau, but it’s alright, because his own people are family enough. 

When he goes to sleep, he can almost imagine the crackle of the grenades and the guns are merely the spluttering of firecrackers, that the screams in the distance are merely the screams of joy that they always have been. 

_(another year passes in the sound of the firecrackers)_

China’s survived through countless civil wars and foreign invasions like this. In a way, Chiang Kai-shek is right and if his citizens weren’t being brutalized, if it weren’t for the fact that he can’t even feel his left arm most days and his entire body is covered with angry burns and sores, even after a century of the same game, Yao would be inclined to agree with him. Consistent, dutiful, forthright, said Confucius. The Nation and its leader would have to set an example that its people could look to. 

_Like water. Flowing smoothly, undeterred by rocks or obstacles in the path. Adaptable, ever changing to the circumstances._

_I am the river. I do not break under the will of others, I flow around them._

_I am constant._

_I will endure._

It’s been the same mantra for thousands of years now. 

China does what he does best. He endures.

**Author's Note:**

> Quite frankly this fic ended up being a mess and a kind of conglomeration of half baked ideas but whatever :/
> 
> I am Chinese American, so this'll probably come off as a biased version of events. 
> 
> The last few lines about water are ripped from the Dao de Jing, while the line about the year passing in the sound of the firecrackers is from a famous poem written by Wang Anshi about the Spring Festival.


End file.
